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Help:Submitting Original Monsters
Can I submit my original monster to CKC? Yes! Here is the quick summary of the process: 1. Every February and August, we open up an official thread for folks to submit kaiju ideas. 2. Anyone may buy sponsorship tickets for their favorite monsters (including your own, of course). Then we randomly choose ~50 kaiju as winners. 3. Those winners are printed up as Trading Cards, and sold through the store. Each set has a name - like “SPN3, SPN4” etc. 4. After each set of Trading Cards has been out for a while (about 5 months) the community votes for their favorite kaiju from that set. 5. The creators of the top concepts become “progenitors” - which means they get to design an official CKC monster in collaboration with Simon Strange and Matt Frank. It usually takes 6-9 months for those meetings to be scheduled. 6. Each time we plan a new CKC game, we hold a community vote on the roster, selecting from the list of all existing progenitors. How much does it cost? As little as nothing! Our initial collaborators pledged $500 each to pay for their progenitor status. But with our new sponsorship & voting process character submissions are now FREE! We now allow the CKC community to help us choose which submitted ideas proceed to each step of our process. Three important points about money: *Your kaiju will need at least 1 sponsorship ticket to be eligible, purchased by yourself or someone else. More tickes is better, obviously, but about 35% of our winners win with a single ticket. Tickets may be purchased in pairs for $10, or you may purchase a pair for 200 Kaiju Coins, which you earn by being active on our forums. Tickets are also available as “Golden Ticket” prizes in random packs of cards. *Folks who win a card slot are asked to pre-purchase a set of cards for $25, plus shipping. We have a limited number of scholarships available for folks who cannot afford to make the pre-purchase. Shipping is cheap within the US, but international shipping is significantly more. *There are NO COSTS AT ALL associated with being voted a progenitor, or becoming part of the video games. The two costs we have (above) are both associated with the card process - because commissioning card art and printing & shipping cards are expensive, and not a major source of revenue for us. We've been adjusting our costs & process for two years to arrive at the current system, and we think it's a sustainable model. What's up with the trading cards, "progenitors", fan submissions, and all those monsters not yet in the game? Before an original monster can become a playable character in CKC, it has to pass through several steps: *'Submission' Anyone can create a thread about their original character to get started! *'Sponsorship' Every 6 months we encourage members of the community to sponsor their favorite monsters - which lets us know which ideas are the most popular! *'Trading Card' Sponsorship winners are turned into amazing collectible Trading Cards! *'Progenitor' For each set of Trading Cards produced, the community votes on their favorite characters to become “progenitors.” *'Playable Character' For every game featuring original characters, the community votes on a roster from the set of all available progenitor monsters! Tell me about Sponsorships! Sponsorships occur each February & August - they run for about a month. It begin when a official thread is created, where people nominate original monsters (usually their own) for sponsorship. After a few days, ticket purchases are opened up - $10 ticket pairs may be purchased for any monster(s) - including your own. These are like raffle tickets - more tickets means a better chance of winning, but many people win with just a single ticket. Tickets are sold in pairs, and you cannot select the same monster twice - this encourages folks to share & swap votes with other members. After a few weeks, ticket purchases are closed, make a list, and then livestream the selection of winners. About 50 characters are selected each time. And yes, about 20% of the winners each time spend no money at all - simply relying on other members to sponsor your monster is a totally viable choice. What do I get if I make it to the progenitor stage? You get gameplay concepting (discussing how the character will play) and visual concepting (Matt Frank will draw an official color concept of you monster) of your monster. Things are brought to the point where your monster is ready to be built in-game. Actually getting your monster to become a playable character requires that it make it through the content selection process for a specific release, which is up to the votes on the design forums. Sunstone Games, LLC. does not in any way guarantee that our monster collaboration will ever become a playable character. (Obviously we hope it will, but we need to protect ourselves legally). What does "gameplay concepting" entail? This means we discuss how the character will play, what sort of strategic decisions will be important to them, etc. We'll use those discussions to help finalize the character's physical attributes, speed, strengths, and so forth. We'll also describe & name any weapons, special attacks, or unique abilities of the character. All of this will eventually be written up, along with a bio, on that monster's official design page. When the design page goes live we'll also create an official design thread for that character that you can participate in. What does "visual concepting" entail? Matt Frank will create pencil sketches, and eventually make a large concept pencil sketch for the wiki page. Once that official concept sketch is complete, Matt will create a final “Hero” sketch of your character in full color. How do we arrange these meetings? We usually do them over Skype. Standard procedure is to have 4 one-hour meetings, plus some e-mail exchanges. The first meeting is between you and Simon Strange, where you discuss your goals. The second meeting is between you Simon and Matt Frank, where we nail down visual goals. The third meeting is between you Simon and Matt again - where Matt presents some sketches and we decide on an official name for your character. The final meeting is between you and Simon, where you write the history and backstory for your character, as well as pick names for all your unique attributes. (Update - after more than 50 collaborations, we'll point out that there really is no “Standard procedure.” Every collaboration is unique.) Can I see some examples? Of course! Check out our existing collaborations at the CKC Monster List page. What rights do I have to give up to my monster if I collaborate with Sunstone Games? Before we begin the process, we have a simple contract for you to sign with us, which defines the rights of the monster we collaborate on. Sunstone Games, LLC. gains exclusive rights to use the monster in video games, and non-exclusive rights to create promotional materials featuring the monster. You retain all other exclusive rights. That means comics, novels, movies - anything you want to use the character for is 100% yours to profit from. The only thing you CAN'T do is sell the character to another video game. (And if you get approval from Sunstone Games, even that is fine.) When will my monster collaboration happen? We are working through our collaboration queue as quickly as possible - we should be able to give everyone at least a rough idea of when their collaboration might start. Our goal is to have each group of progenitors have their collaborations scheduled between 6 and 12 months from when they win.